I couldn’t stop them. My heart was racing, and my nerves felt charged with electricity. My trembling fingers were still curled around the smooth handle of the gun in my lap. The gun I’d used to shoot someone.

My stomach heaved, and I closed my eyes, but it didn’t help. I could still see him, the slack face and the sightless, staring eyes. The bullet hole in his skull, oozing blood. I didn’t even remember pulling the trigger. The moment I’d seen him through the attic opening, aiming his gun at Garret, I’d reacted. Without thinking, just as I had in the St. George

compound—quick and lethal, almost instinctive. Now, because of me, a man was dead. I’d become a killer, an assassin, just like Talon wanted.

Lilith would’ve been proud.

“Where are we going?” Garret’s voice echoed beside me, calm and composed. He didn’t sound remotely anxious or freaked out, as if being targeted by snipers, breaking into a house and taking out two fully armed soldiers was a perfectly normal day for him. Business as usual. For a moment, I resented his perfect composure. I’d just killed a man, one of his former brothers in arms; you would think he’d be slightly upset by that.

“Downtown,” Riley answered without looking back. He sat in the front seat, both hands on the wheel, and drove like he rode a motorcycle: fast and with purpose. Beside him, Wes hunched over his laptop, not looking up when Riley took a corner without slowing down, making the wheels screech. “Near the Strip. I have a friend there who can hide us.”

“And the vehicle?” Garret looked out the back window, maybe searching for flashing lights. “I assume the original owner isn’t going to be happy about us hot-wiring his car.”

Wes snickered. “Hot-wire a car,” he scoffed. “Please. Is that how you do things, St. George? How very primitive.” He tapped two fingers against his skull. “Modern cars these days have lovely computerized brains that you can turn on with a phone. Makes them fairly easy to hack into, if you know what you’re doing.”

Great, I thought, crossing my arms. The gun dropped onto the seat beside me. I didn’t want to look at it, much less touch it anymore. So now we’re murderers and car thieves.

A soft click made me look up. Garret had reached over and taken the pistol from where it lay between us, then smoothly flicked on the safety. He turned the weapon around and offered it to me again, his gray eyes solemn as they met mine.

“You had no choice,” he said, holding my gaze. “Those soldiers would’ve killed us both if they could. There was no other option, you did what you had to do.”

The lump in my throat got bigger, and I eyed the weapon like it was a giant venomous spider. But I made myself reach out and take it back, closing my fingers around the now warm metal. “I know,” I whispered, setting the gun carefully on my leg. “But that doesn’t make it all right.” I shot a wary glance at the front, where Riley and Wes were talking in low voices. Wes was pointing to a map on the laptop screen, where a glowing blue dot approached an intersection. Riley swore, gunned the engine and ran an aging yellow light. Neither seemed to be listening to what was happening in the backseat, but I lowered my voice anyway. “I don’t want to be like them,” I murmured. “Either of them. Talon or St. George. If I start killing without a thought, if it becomes instinct, why did I leave Talon at all? What makes me any different than the Viper they wanted me to become?”

The blare of a siren made us jerk up. A cop car passed us, going in the opposite direction, lights flashing blue and red, speeding toward the distant column of black smoke curling into the sky. The soldier leaned back, gazing out the window, and didn’t answer my question.

* * *

The sun had set over the distant mountains, leaving only a fading orange splash on the horizon, when we reached the inner city, or the Strip, as Riley called it. My misery was temporarily forgotten as I pressed my nose against the car window, gaping at the wonders looming overhead. I’d never seen so many cars, lights, people. The streets practically glowed; hotels, casinos, massive signs, monuments, all blazing with neon luminance against the darkening sky. An enormous cartoon cowboy waved to us as we drove past, and a miniature sultan’s castle boasted a colorful rainbow of lights across its domed roof. I caught a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, shimmering gold against the night, rising above the streets like a beacon. Not the Eiffel Tower, I realized; as far as I knew, the real one was still in Paris, so this was obviously a replica. But it was still huge, and impressive, and blazing with light, like everything around us.

“Close your mouth, Firebrand,” Riley remarked with a smirk in his voice as we cruised down the street, passing buildings and people and an endless string of cars. “You’re fogging up the windows.”

I tore my gaze from the massive buildings surrounding us, sliding back in my seat. “Are we going to stop soon?” I asked, hoping the answer was yes.

Riley snorted. “Not here,” he said, and all traces of amusement fled. He shot a grim look out the window at the glittering structures lining the roads. “Definitely not on the Strip. Vegas is a huge cash flow for the organization. They have their claws in basically every vice you can imagine—

gambling, drugs, strip clubs, you name it.” Riley pulled a disgusted face, curling a lip. “Thankfully, there aren’t many actual dragons in Vegas. Just one, really. But he’s a temperamental bastard who makes even Talon nervous, and he owns nearly all the hotels and casinos on the Strip. We step into the wrong building, we might as well be walking around with glowing signs above our heads.”